


The Sun, The Moon, and The Constellation

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 08:45:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that was how the three of them found peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun, The Moon, and The Constellation

**Author's Note:**

> Also found on my [Tumblr](http://a-daub-of-cerulean.tumblr.com/post/25631134042).

If you asked Castiel how it all started, he’d tell you a funny story about how his virginity wasn’t lost to the man he’d always loved. He’d tell you that he had his first surge of jealousy _before_ his first orgasm, and Sam on the side would laugh and softly elbow him in the ribs.

He found out about Sam and Dean’s  _thing_ during one hunt that they could afford to take off Bobby’s hand, amidst the thousands of adjustments they were making to comply to their newly adopted domesticity. A family vacation of some sort, three day job of chasing the sun even further east when July was already beating them down. Road tripping meant the Impala, Zeppelin, speeding off highways with the windows down and Dean bellowing songs Castiel was beginning to learn, and it was well. Road trips also meant motels, meant crashing in shabby places at one in the morning when nobody was awake enough to drive any further. They checked in, all three of them with the slightest slump against the counter, eyelids getting heavier by the minute.

Maybe that’s why Castiel missed the glance between Sam and Dean that would have explained everything five hours sooner, when Dean found him against the Impala’s backseat with a grave expression and his fingers threaded together. But he’d known, after those five hours, when Dean found him at the break of dawn and the sunlight lit stray pieces of his tousled hair a translucent gold, when he’d approached with cheeks dusted pinker than what the cold morning air was to blame. And ah, Cas knew right then, so he didn’t ask, and when Dean asked what he was doing there, I found your door open, with the slightest tremor in his voice Castiel didn’t tell him that the walls were a tad too thin.

He knew Sam noticed. He’d done the right thing, not alerting Dean, but he couldn’t help the side glances he threw at Sam on occasion, and Sam _noticed_. He felt no ill will towards Sam—it actually settled something in his stomach, knowing that Dean was safe, was taken care of all along. When they were back in the safety of their home, an apartment at the time, when Dean left to take a _real_ shower, Sam sat Cas down to a mug of coffee, and they spoke. “You don’t have to feel threatened,” Sam assured him, though it was entirely unnecessary, “he loves you.”

“I know,” Castiel had chuckled at the absurdity then, scratched the back of his head. “How long?”

“Years,” was all Sam said, and he found himself content enough with the answer.

That was during the time when Dean worked midday shifts at the bar—which he proclaimed was totally unexciting—and Sam stayed home as a freelance writer. Castiel occasionally worked, though it was mostly volunteering, but he had built a stable reputation among their community. On most days, he stayed home with Sam, enjoying his quiet and comfortable company and retreating to read in his room when Sam got to work. Sometimes Sam would bring back doughnuts and books, which made quite a combination for a summer afternoon, and at dinner they would have half-heated discussions on the current piece of classic literature he was absorbed in. Sometimes he’d bring coffee to Sam’s room and peek at what he was working on at the time.

Castiel had become fond of Sam. He became fond of Sam not in the same way that he felt bound to Dean, but in a softer, sweeter way that gave him the occasional pang of loneliness when Sam was engrossed in writing and left him to his own devices. Sam and Dean were so different, he learned. Sam was brightness, was the morning coffee, was the dimples on his cheeks and the doughnuts he brought home in warm summer; Dean was the light in the darkness, was the faint cologne he wore, was the pattern of intricate scars on his skin which Castiel always felt the inexplicable urge to trace when they lay together. He loved them both: keep the distinction clear, he told himself through this, and he did.

On the day it first happened, he’d brought coffee to Sam at three, but that time he didn’t leave, didn’t inquire about the story on the screen. He’d removed Sam’s thick rimmed glasses, folded them, left them on the table. And then he’d rested his hands gently on the curve of Sam’s shoulder and pressed kisses to Sam’s temple, cheek, and Sam had closed his eyes and chuckled, nudging into Castiel’s caress. He’d clicked off the monitor and spun his chair around. “I am a compromise,” he said with a hint of a smile, trailing his hands up Castiel’s arm, and Castiel was slightly disheartened by the finality of that statement. “You’re not,” he told him, firm, as he fell on his knees, and Sam had told him “It’s okay if I am” before he leaned down and pressed their lips together.

They had gone all the way during their first time, and Sam was careful, was soft. Sam encased Castiel within the warmth of himself when they kissed, delved in for sweet pecks that were caught between passionate and innocuous. Castiel was okay with it, letting Sam’s sure hands guide him, slide the sweatpants—Sam’s old sweatpants—off his hips without undoing the drawstrings, and he found himself content with giving his first to Sam, entrusted himself wholly to him. And Sam didn’t disappoint, held back just enough, the inhibition of his more lascivious desires evident when the glint in his eyes spoke of more than the tentative roll of his hips, and Castiel had to admit the way Sam held back drove him mad.

In the wake of their lovemaking, they lay there on Sam’s bed, sated and content, Sam with his hands behind his head and a smile playing at his lips, and Castiel, facing him with one arm folded and one draped across his bare stomach, had contemplated reiterating that Sam really wasn’t just a substitution, but he knew some part of Sam would never wholly believe him. They didn’t stay long—clambered off the soiled sheets, scrubbed down together in the shower, slid the comfy sweats back on over naked thighs. He caught the curious perk of Sam’s eyebrows when he walked off topless, and maybe it was intentional, maybe not. He also didn’t remember exactly at what point he’d fallen asleep, only that he had, and when he woke again he was in his own bed, and Dean had returned home.

In the month that followed, Castiel met Sam in his room another four times, and he’d gotten good at this thing so Sam stopped holding back. Sam could fool anyone with his smiles, but _oh_ , was he a wild beast unleashed, hot, heavy breaths and sharp snap of hips, driving into tender places, driving into the bed, the wall, the kitchen counters (yes, they’d gone there). Castiel found another Sam, one who seemed to have turned the tap of his throat and let loose noises Castiel’d never dreamed of. The Sam with dark eyes that had him weak at the knees, and he liked him, how he _liked_ him.

Castiel often thought about Dean when they had sex. He wasn’t seeing Dean where Sam was: he saw Sam pinning Dean against the wall with the cut of his hips, holding Dean’s wrists down to the mattress, guiding Dean as he perched atop his thighs. When he came, he’d wondered if that was what Dean felt, too, and the bliss in the base of his stomach would multiply with the notion.

“We should tell Dean,” he suggested one day, in the golden aftermath one afternoon, and Sam had grunted an approval after a moment of contemplation.

He had the perfect chance one night when Dean crashed home looking halfway drunk, but more at ease than he’d been in a week. Sam was out stocking up on (printer and various other) cartridges, and they had planned to tell Dean that night when Sam was back, or the next. Castiel inquired about his current state of mind and “tipsy”, Dean said, and anything that Castiel might have been planning to say was promptly dismissed when Dean shed his jacket on the couch and stepped _right_ up to Castiel against the non-perishables cabinet.

“Dean”, he said, half whispered in the fragile space between them. He couldn’t look at Dean then, felt the coming of a storm, but Dean kept ducking his head and chasing his eyes until Castiel finally gave in and surrendered himself to the captivating green, so lovely a shade, in the evening dark.

“Why are we always beating ‘round the bush, Cas?” Dean asked, like the sigh of an old man with too many regrets, and it momentarily startled Castiel, because just yesterday he was throwing sidelong glances and leaning in too close and looking at him when he thought he couldn’t see. Just yesterday they were passing each other in the narrow hallway in the dark, were simultaneously shifting out of the way and pressing their backs to opposite walls with barely an inch of space between their mingling breaths. Just yesterday Castiel was tilting his head to one side and Dean the other with their eyes locked like they were waiting for an imminent _something_ which neither dared approach, and suddenly Dean was saying this, suddenly—or maybe not, not really—Dean was kissing him.

They’d done more that night, wet kisses to grinding hips and aimlessly wandering hands. At last Dean had rid himself of his shirt, sat on his knees and went down on Castiel. Castiel came onto his bared chest, came so hard he got a bruise knocking his back into the counter. When Sam got home, Dean had already passed out on the couch with his head resting on a pillow atop Castiel’s legs.

In the end, they never did tell him up front. It was handled the way things between them was always handled, through knowing looks and brushing hands and soft caresses, language spoken through senses that was so much more easily understood. Castiel had wandered into the kitchen one night, empty mug in hand and Sam’s old Stanford shirt hanging loose on his shoulders, to find Dean pressed against Sam into the counter, eyes shut in bliss. He paused for only a moment, and walked on by with his toes in the soft carpet, so quiet that Dean hadn’t known he was there until the mug made a soft thud in the sink. Dean had jumped, shoving at Sam’s chest vehemently and was halfway through the “It’s not what you think” when Sam caught his wrists and hushed him, whispering “it’s okay”, and when he looked from Sam’s telling gaze to Castiel’s sheepish smile and his brother’s shirt on the angel’s thinner shoulders, he knew it was more than okay.

Sam led them to the bed, while Dean and Castiel tailed along with some unspoken words and their heads lowered. It seemed like Sam was the bravest of all three in that moment, when Dean kept sneaking glances at Castiel like he should apologize, like he’d done something wrong and Castiel was feeling a thrumming in his veins. He had had sex with both of them before, but this was something else, something new and enticing. They’d talked about it on the bed, just the briefest bit, until Dean’s discomfort from the abruptness of it all dissolved into one for the current chick-flick moment, and Castiel had laughed, and pressed their lips together.

It was shortly after that that they moved to a quieter place, not far enough from their old residence to be strangers. Sam found a stable job, and Dean kept his, although he was prompted to the night shifts, being (“obviously”) the reason behind the sudden popularity boom of the bar. Castiel found a part time job at the local stable of all places, and Dean spent most of his time contemplating the perks of dating a cowboy. They were just a normal family, with less estrogen, the only different thing being the three bedrooms, two single beds with untouched covers and one king with perpetually rumpled sheets.

The sun, the moon, and the constellation. And that was how the three of them found peace.


End file.
